2nd Edition - 2006

NEWSLETTER BY CELIA WINTER IRVING*

PREAMBLE:

This second edition of the Newsletter further reveals that Zimbabwe´s stone sculptures is answerable to the deep needs and aspirations of people from very different countries and cultures - that at its most ´African´ the stone sculpture contains truths which are admissible in the lives of most, wherever they come from and their periods of history and time. The stone sculpture answers many people´s questions about life, death and the hereafter. It provides ´material´, which is food for thought for anyone who is concerned about spiritual settings, social issues, and those who have both deep rooted and more cosmopolitan cultural outlooks. If any contemporary African art has had an influence on the world we live in today it is surely the stone sculpture of Zimbabwe.

The stone sculpture wherever it is seen strikes so many different chords in so many different people. Be it in UK, the Czech Republic or Canada as exemplified in this Newsletter the stone sculpture is a major feature of what is taking place in art in the world. Today as readily as the sculpture is prone to international influences, it shows the sensitisation of the sculptors to their local situations, and thus imparts accurate rather than distorted information to the outside world. The sculptors still recruit their traditions and their cultural past as ´agents of knowledge´ about Zimbabwe´s complex and spiritual history, which remains deep, etched in their minds. The sculptors today are more than artists, even more than the great sculptors some have come to be, they are ambassadors ´without portfolio´ emissaries for their country´s culture, its noble past, the beauty of its natural environment which they so tellingly represent, and allow the beauty and colours of their stones to represent in their work.

While some directions in contemporary art are short lived, subject to whim and fashion and materials which ´wither and die´, the stone sculpture moves on, the sculptors remain resolute in their intention and more and more people becoming sculptors lends a greater variety and approach to the work.

This Newsletter focuses on how the stone sculpture has been presented in exhibition in Troja, Prague, (with more than 5,000 visitors in the first two weeks) and the Regional Gallery of Uherske-Hradiste and will be presented in Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic in October of 2006, and the National Gallery of Prague in 2007,and how it was presented in London in 2006 by the Africa Millennium Foundation. It also focuses on sculptor Dominic Benhura giving of his heart and time to make sculptures in support of the Girl Child Network - awarded as prizes in Canada.

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